Lightnings Daughter by Mary Herbert (android based ebook reader .txt) 📗

he had said and done fel into place: his flight from Pra Desh, his refusal to talk about his family or his past, his abiding sadness. She knew how he felt. For the healer, looking into the pit must have been like standing on top of a burial mound and saying goodbye to those buried there. She held onto her friend and let him cry.

"There's nothing down there anymore," she said softly. "Diana is gone."

He wept until the worst of his grief had waned, then he was quiet for a very long time, his gaze lost in the depths of the pit. Gabria could hear the others moving around and searching the cavern for an exit, but she stayed with Piers while he faced the phantoms of his past.

When at last he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and stood up, Gabria knew his grief was under control.

The slow, painful process of healing his old wounds had finally begun.

"Was this why you went back to Corin Treld?" he asked, offering her his hand.

She nodded, took his hand, and rose to her feet. "The dead must lie in peace."

"And so they will," Piers answered wearily. Then he added, "Now, let's seek the living. I would stil like to face the Fon."

"Do you know the way out?" she asked.

"Yes. I was here years ago as a healer, but I've never had to stay in this place of torment."

Piers led her around the pit and headed for a wall where a rack of tools and instruments hung. The others fol owed. He found the door latch, which was cleverly hidden in the stone, and pul ed the rack aside to reveal the door. They filed out, with Gabria's lights bobbing overhead, and found a staircase leading up to the next level. When the last warrior left the torture chamber, Piers looked once more into the black cavern and gently shut the door.

The party went upstairs to the prison level and paused to wait for Piers to take the lead. The travelers stared about them in horror. There were two corridors, one on either side of the stairs, lined with lightless stone cells. The wal s were wet with moisture, and the floors were ankle deep in muck and excrement. The smell was horrible.

The noise was even worse. The sight of the lights had excited the prisoners, and they screamed and cried and shouted behind their bars in a hideous cacophony of misery and fear.

Surprisingly, there were no guards.

Piers slowed as he came up the stairs, and his eyes widened. "I know some of those people,” he exclaimed. "They don't belong here!"

Secen started toward a door, but Athlone stopped him. "Not now. We don't have time."

They hurried on, leaving the dungeon and its tormented prisoners behind, and ran up to the next level. Khan’di's map did not include the deep underground levels of the palace, only the Fon's wing, where Branth was supposed to be. The party had to rely on Piers's eleven-year-old memories of the extensive storerooms, wine cellars, and cold storage rooms underneath the main floors.

The healer was surprised by how much he remembered. Released of his grief, his memories flowed out as clear and sharp as yesterday's hours. He was able to lead his companions up through the levels to a corridor just below the Fon's wing of the palace.

Khan'di had told them that, according to spies, Branth was being held in one of the Fon's personal storerooms. The healer took his companions through a large room full of vats and up a winding staircase. At the top, a solid oak door blocked their way. Piers reached for the door handle, but Treader began barking furiously and shoved himself between Piers and the door.

"Piers, be careful!" Gabria cried. "Treader says there's fire."

The healer looked skeptical, but he stood back from the stout oak door and very carefully opened it just a crack. A dark cloud of smoke billowed out, and the voracious roar of a fire out of control sounded clearly through the slight opening. Piers slammed the door shut.

"By the gods, what happened?" Athlone exclaimed.

Piers glanced around worriedly. "I don't know, but we'll have to go another way."

The travelers raced down the stairs and through the storage - room. From there they took a different corridor, one that led up the main stairs to the palace's banquet hal . There they stopped and gazed about them in frightened astonishment. A few torches were stil burning in the sconces on the walls of the ornate room, giving off enough light so the parry could see the expanse of the entire hall.

The banquet hal was in the central block of the palace along with the waiting rooms, the Fon's throne room, and audience chamber. To the north was the Fon's wing of private apartments, chambers, and servants' quarters. Already the fire from below was spreading through the first floor of that wing.

It was eating through the timbers and the north wal of the banquet hal . As it climbed to the floor of the second story, the blaze consumed everything in its path. Even as the travelers came to a stop and Gabria banished her lights, the banquet hal was filling with smoke. A muted roaring echoed through the room.

Palace guards, servants, and courtiers ran back and forth, carrying items out of the Fon's wing; some were running in panic, others screamed or yel ed orders. No one seemed to be doing anything to control the fire, and no one paid attention to the clanspeople in the hall.

"Lord!" Keth called. "Look at this." He was standing in a deep embrasure looking out a rare glassed window.

Athlone and the others joined him and crowded into the space. They fol owed Keth's gaze out to the high wall that encircled the palace. The Fon's guards were struggling to keep the mob from the massive wooden gate that blocked the entrance. But while the travelers